Never let a tragedy go to waste, right? The magazine that pays more money for a celebrity baby photo than most upper class individuals earn in a year would really appreciate it if you’d willingly call your representatives and demand an assault on your rights. What People Magazine fails to realize is that this should not be a discussion on guns, this should be a discussion on mental health, as well as the fact that disturbed individuals are targeting citizens who are not allowed to defend themselves.

People, a publication well known for its celebrity exclusives and pop-culture coverage, conveyed a serious and striking message in Wednesday’s edition.

Exactly one week after a gunman killed nine people at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Ore.,People published the phone numbers, email addresses and Twitter handles of all 535 members in what it deemed a “call to action on gun violence.”

Jess Cagle, People Editorial Director, wrote the gun violence diatribe in the Editor’s Letter section of the magazine. He spoke of how infuriating it is to remember all the times throughout the years that we’ve witnessed a mass shooting and have failed to make any changes to the laws. He even notes that 10,006 gun-related deaths have happened in the United States so far in 2015. Of course he doesn’t note how many are from suicide & self-defense; I suppose I can understand why he excluded such details, narratives are hard to protect when facts are injected into the conversation. Like the facts shown below from the CDC:

Researchers also found that the majority of firearm deaths are from suicide, not homicide. “Between the years 2000 and 2010, firearm-related suicides significantly outnumbered homicides for all age groups, annually accounting for 61 percent of the more than 335,600 people who died from firearm-related violence in the United States.”

Yet there are countries with much stricter gun control that have a higher number of suicides. Sadly, if someone wants to take their own life, lack of weapon isn’t going to stop them.

The Federalist addressed 7 gun control myths yesterday, you can read the full article here (highly recommended). However, I’m going to give a few excerpts.

Is gun violence skyrocketing?

A 2014 analysis from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) showed a significant decline in violent crime over the last five years:

In 2013, the latest year for which complete data are available, the number of homicides in which a firearm was involved totaled 8,454, representing a 12 percent drop compared to the number of gun homicides in 2003. And the 2003 figure represented a 41 percent drop from the gun homicide total in 1994, the earliest year for which data are readily accessible on the FBI’s website.

All told, the number of gun homicides in the U.S. has fallen by nearly 50 percent over the last two decades. Any amount of violent crime is too much, but it’s wrong to assert in the face of all evidence that gun violence in the U.S. is skyrocketing.

Do gun-free zones prevent mass shootings?

Just as Jess Cagle repeated the sentiments of President Obama, so shall I: “As a country we clearly aren’t doing enough, and our elected officials’ conversations about solutions usually end in political spin.” He’s right, we aren’t doing enough. Instead of discussing mental health and how we aid monsters by making their targets defenseless, we’re talking about gun show loopholes that don’t exist, confiscation that can’t be done, and touting numbers that include self-defense, suicides, etc., instead of giving the whole picture. So I concur with Jess Cagle, and after mulling over this entire debacle, I have come up with a couple of ways in which you can use this letter for the betterment of the United States:

1. Use those numbers to call your representatives and remind then that the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

2. Let them know that you’re not going to support policies that would not have stopped recent attacks, and that the use of innocent victims to push such policies is revolting.

While Republicans hold a majority, leftists will use this tragedy to try and paint them as indifferent towards gun violence. Let’s all show the ivory tower elitist celebrities, and their magazines, that we aren’t this naive.